Happy Endings
by dream vs nightmare
Summary: After the Evil Queen's curse fails, Prince Charming is murdered by her hand and mourned by his wife, who throws herself off the castle turret to escape her grief. It's been eight years since Emma's seen either of her parents, and eight years since she stopped believing in happy endings. But can an elusive huntsman's honesty and charm get her to believe once more? Dark AU.


_Or, the one where Rumplestiltskin and Belle send Emma off to the ball to meet everyone's favorite Huntsman and grin like mad as their plan unfolds with the help of a certain fairy's magic blessing._

**Disclaimer: **_I still don't own Once Upon A Time, but that's okay. I'll just believe in the possibility of a happy ending for me and my OTP._

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><p>The sky outside the castle windows begins to darken with a storm no one has ever seen the likes of before. Prince Charming's face pales as he watches the clouds descend upon the land form the observatory, for he knows they aren't bringing any natural weather.<p>

They're bringing the darkest storm imaginable, a storm that will end only once the Curse rips everything away.

The walls shake with the thunderous tolling of the tower bell, and so too do his bones as he travels down the palace staircase and makes for the bedchamber where his wife lays. He runs down the hall and shoulders the heavy wooden door open with ease, hoping against all hope that Snow hasn't gone into labor yet.

He hears rather than sees that his prayers have gone unanswered when he steps into the room. His wife's cries echo off the walls as she throws her head back onto the pillows, tears staining her cheeks and blood staining the bed. He runs to her side and grasps her hand tight in his own - she feels feverish, sweaty with stress and the contractions that he knows must be coming all too quickly now.

"No," Snow says, her voice rising in a wave of panic when she yells, "I can't have this baby now!"

"Doc, do something," Charming urges as he squeezes his wife's hand and rests his cheek against her forehead before murmuring, "It's going to be okay, the wardrobe's almost finished. Just…just hold on."

Snow lets out scream after desperate scream as she struggles to keep their child inside her. Just as he is starting to lose hope they'll succeed, Geppetto bursts through the doors and announces that the wardrobe is indeed finished.

"It's too late, we can't move her," Doc says, his words freezing Charming from scooping Snow White up off the bed and into the room where the magical vessel is.

The only thing the two can do now is urge her to push. Push and hope. Soon, her cries mingle with the sound of their daughter's and Doc is quick to blanket her in a white quiet that bore her name - Emma. Charming had thought it a wonderful first present for their newborn when the idea had been proposed. But now he fears it will be her last.

"The wardrobe," Snow murmurs as she looked up into Charming's eyes. "It only takes one..."

"Then our plan has failed." He says before their gazes travel to the door as one - the sound of sword-fighting can be heard just above Emma's quiet cries. "But at least we're together."

Charming wraps his arms around his wife and bends his head forward to gaze upon his daughter - _their_ daughter - for perhaps the first and last time. And then the sky breaks open. Not with the dark magic he'd anticipated, however, but with light, gentle rain.

"Snow…" He whispers, eyes flickering to her still tear-stained face. "Do you think-?"

_Do you think we're safe? Do you think _she's_ safe?_

He doesn't dare say the words on his mind, lest it be a cruel trick of his imagination.

They listen to the rain as it falls upon the roof in mutual silence. For even if it really is only an illusion, a single word from their lips could break it. And he knows they need it to last for as long as possible. They need these last few moments with their daughter to be ones of peace.

When the sounds of the natural rainstorm don't come to pass pass, Charming turns away to look to the window.

"The clouds…they're gone," He whispers before moving back to the comfort of his wife's arms. They hold each other tight as they gaze out the windowpane.

Before long, the pitter-patter of rain on the roof grows to a dull roar, drowning out every cry Emma makes. Claps of thunder shake the bed where they lean against each other. The wind howls in the trees outside the palace gates, its awful shrieks and moans louder than even the most haunting banshee's screams.

And then…it's over. The sky lightens and the rain slows to mere misting. The thunder recedes, and with it, the wind. So the curse has failed. They are free to live their lives…but always, under the shadow of fear that the Queen will someday rise again to take their happy ending - _all_ of their happy endings - away for good.

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><p>It is many years later that Emma's happy ending begins to unravel, however unbeknown to her. She is eight, and loves to pour over all the books in her mother and father's library with a sort of insatiable hunger for new words and new stories.<p>

She begins to understand the word "leave" faster than anyone ever thought. But she's given a good example one day, when she presses her ear close to the wood of the door to her parent's room and hears her mother say, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to leave you."

It's hard to hear her father's voice, rough as waves breaking on a rocky shore, over the sound of the rain drumming on the castle roof. "But you must, Snow. It'll be alright. We can do this."

"And what if we can't? What if it doesn't work?"

One of the maids, Joanna, pulls her away from the door and down the stairs, murmuring something about making a nice apple pie - the soft sound of her voice drowns out her father saying that if they can't succeed, then they'll die trying.

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><p>Emma understands the word "away", though now that she is ten she can't quite remember where she first heard it. Her parents have told her enough bedtime stories for her to know that when the princess goes away, the world isn't the same when she comes back.<p>

And that makes her sad.

Because Emma likes her little corner of the world, filled with fairy dust that sparkles in the sun and cobblestone walkways that shine when it rains, gardens full of flowers in every color she can name and more that she cannot. But most of all, she likes the warm summer nights spent on the floor by the hearth as her mother plaits her hair into a braid down her back and her father tells her tales of their many adventures together.

But she is a princess. And sometimes, princesses have to go away. So that is what she does, and although her parents don't have the heart to tell her why, she figures it must have something to do with the way the commoners murmur in the streets about the Evil Queen's new Curse. The worst curse imaginable, even darker than the failed first one.

She doesn't tell her parents goodbye, and how can she? "Goodbye" is for the long days before a war and the realization that everything will change after it's said. She doesn't like change. So she doesn't say goodbye, only that she'll see them as soon as she can.

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><p>Emma understands the word "magic", though 'stiltskin is loathe to let her near it even though she promises she won't mess anything up. She looks out the window to where the castle - <em>her<em> castle - lay in the distance, hidden from view by the shadows of the forest and the walls the Evil Queen put around it. And as she thinks of the last time she saw her parents, their lips curved into twin smiles as they held back tears they wouldn't shed, she wishes more than anything that she could bring them back to her. And as soon as the thought enters her head, she swears she thinks she hears Rumplestiltskin murmur that magic can do much, but not that.

The vial of glowing purple liquid nearly falls from her hand and shatters onto the floor at his words. Because although she's heard them so many times before, she doesn't think he's ever sounded quite as somber or as grave as he does now.

"Be careful with that, dearest! You don't know the power of what you wield," He murmurs as his feverish golden eyes swivel over her face and then the vial in her fingers. "If you weren't so very important to my bewitching little maid, I'd have to throw you downstairs in the dungeon with all the other orphans who dropped such precious objects."

"So do it. I mean, what left is there to take?" Emma asks, her voice as stony as the tile they stand on. "She's already taken my family, my home, and my crown. So if you take my happy ending away now, what does it even matter?"

"I'll tell you what," Rumplestiltskin says after a long moment passes between them. "If you give me that vial there, I'll magic you up a pretty little gown for that ball tonight. Every princess deserves a happy ending, hm?"

She levels him with a glare as icy as the frost that lines the windows, can feel the bitter cold of the night seeping into her very bones. "There aren't any happy endings left for me."

He doesn't say a word about what day it is as she walks over to his work table and puts the vial back in its pouch. And she's grateful for it, doesn't want the attention today. Doesn't want the attention on this day now or ever, because this was the day eight years ago that she got word of her father's death. And later, much later, news that her mother had thrown herself off one of the castle turrets, only to be saved by a glittering green fairy who's name no one knew.

But today is also her birthday. And she hasn't celebrated it since she was ten years old, sitting in Rumplestiltskin's lap as she blew out a single candle on a cake that felt too big, too much, without her parents beside her.

"Now, what do you think, little missy?" Rumplestiltskin asks once she turns back around. The sound of his voice cuts through her thoughts like an arrow slicing through glass. He smiles his impish smile and snaps his fingers, summoning a ball gown fit for a princess onto her figure before spinning her towards the mirror. "Do you want to go with chartreuse? Blood orange? Lapis lazuli?"

The dress changes to the appropriate shade for every color he names, and somehow each and every one reminds her of her mother.

"You can have any color you like, dearest!" He murmurs at her ear, voice as gentle as a spring rain on meadow grass as he clasps a string of pearls around her neck. "And you really should pick wisely, for I hear your Huntsman will be there tonight."

He gazes at her in the mirror before snapping his fingers one final time, grinning when the dress he's procured for her turns a rich, warm shade of gray with intricate swirls of silver and blue; smoke on the water, like the day the dwarves cast her father out to sea on a deathbed fit for a king - the king he never got to be.

"Which one?" She asks, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice as her mind wanders away from her father and toward the only huntsman she's ever known. The one who used to hold her at night as she screamed herself awake from a nightmare. The one who held her hand as they walked through the forest beyond the palace together. The one who gave his life to serving a queen as evil as her name in exchange for her mother's freedom.

But how can she think of the huntsman's hands in her own, his body flush against hers as he guides her across the floor when there's no one to dance with her mother, anymore? How can she think of the possibility of a happy ending when the one her mother had was ripped away from her faster than the space between two heartbeats?

"The one who makes butterflies dance 'til dawn underneath your lovely summer skintone, my dear," 'Stiltskin murmurs in her ear, not missing the way she blushes at the words before he walks away to grab the vial of purple stuff and then out of the room to fetch a crown. He leaves the room muttering something that sounds like, "there must be an old tiara lying around in that dungeon, _somewhere_" as the sound of his footsteps recede down the stairs.

For the next several hours after that, her impish adoptive father and his beautiful book-loving maid make it their mission in life to both transform her into the princess she would've been and annoy the living daylights out of her in the process. She rolls her eyes when the imp actually shuts the door for her as she steps into the family carriage, trilling to have a magical time. He doesn't give her a curfew, something she'd entirely expected after he'd procured the dress and the dancing shoes for her. She can hear the noise of the fireworks bursting overhead King Thomas and Queen Ella's castle even as she turns away from the window to stare off at the darkening forest around her; the sound numbs the noise of her thoughts as the horses gallop along the cobbled road toward the ball.

As the clock strikes ten, she closes her eyes and makes a wish on the brightest star in the sky. "I wish that I won't have to spend another birthday alone."

From her resting place inside an emerald rosebud, Tinkerbell hears Emma's whispered wish ripple through her mind and heads toward the castle the ball is to be held at to make it so. When the fairy's gaze settles upon the scene before her, her lips curve into a knowing smile when she sees that a young man with soft blue eyes and hair a hundred shades of brown is making a wish as well. And if her sense about things is right, the two are fated to fall in love as suddenly and as hopelessly as Snow White and Prince Charming had done so many years before them.

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><p><strong>chapter one end<strong>


End file.
